Broadcom says its newly revised 802.11g chips offer range without gimmicks: In an interview last week, Bill Bunch, senior product line manager for wireless, said that the single-chip 802.11g adapter and two-chip 802.11g router/access point products had dramatically improved receive sensitivity, which translates into increased range. "If you have better hearing, and you and I are talking, then I can walk away further, and we can continue to talk at a very decent throughput," Bunch said. "It's like we both went out and got a hearing aid." The new technology is called BroadRange.
The new chips offer 50 percent greater range using the 125 High Speed Mode, Bunch said. "This gives you higher speed at every point that you care about." I asked Bunch what the real world performance would be given, that Wi-Fi is often advertising as a "150 foot" technology that turns out to be much less in homes with real building materials.
Bunch said that the company tests against environments that give them realistic results: if you formerly could reach 50 feet in one direction in an interior space, he said, you should now be able to reach 75 feet. For most homes, a 150-foot diameter might be all that's needed.
The adapter chip is available now; the router/AP chipset are at the sampling stage.